Rene Valentin-Matos had been extradited from a small town in Minnesota and was making his initial appearance in a Cook County courtroom on charges he raped and strangled the 12-year-old in 2009 and sexually assaulted a 26-year-old woman in 2011, both in Chicago.

I love this DNA, it can pinpoint a suspect to the victim or the scene of the crime. Forensics can even pickup a suspects dried skin, or head or body air, and believe me, the rooms of a crime are vacuumed and preserved. Now a days if you are convicted of a felony, your DNA can legally be taken...

Jahmeshia’s mother, Birdie Lewis, said she never lost hope that her daughter’s killer would be unmasked.

“I knew I was going to get me some justice somehow, some way,” she told reporters at the Leighton Criminal Court Building after Valentin-Matos had been ordered held without bail. “I kept it in God’s hands, and He finally gave me some justice before Mother’s Day. The best Mother’s Day I could ever have.”

Prosecutors revealed in court that DNA recovered from beneath Jahmeshia’s fingernails was linked to Valentin-Matos, a transient worker who at the time of the murder lived at the church where the girl’s family worshipped. Police said Valentin-Matos, a father of three grown children, admitted that he knew the girl, but her mother said Thursday that she didn’t recognize him.

Prosecutors also said the second rape victim knew Valentin-Matos from the neighborhood and had asked to stay the night at his residence in the Pilsen neighborhood after she had been evicted from her own home in November 2011. Early the first morning there, Valentin-Matos entered the room where she was sleeping and raped her, said Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Mack.

Both crimes had gone unsolved until a crucial break last January when DNA indicated that the same man committed both Jahmeshia’s slaying and the rape of the Pilsen woman. With the help of that woman and the dogged efforts of police detectives, police pinpointed Valentin-Matos as the suspect.

But since he had no felony convictions in his background, investigators had no DNA of his to try to match up. Chicago police, however, tracked him down to tiny Cold Spring, Minn., where he was arrested while shoveling snow at a bakery where he worked part-time.

Authorities obtained court permission in Minnesota to take a DNA swab from his mouth, and the results showed he was responsible for both Jahmeshia’s murder and rape as well as the second sexual assault, Mack said.

Jahmeshia was last seen Nov. 15, 2009, as she ran to board a CTA bus at 63rd Street and Racine Avenue after leaving her aunt's house. She never arrived at her Englewood home. Her body was discovered Nov. 30 in an alley in West Englewood.

Some of Jahmeshia’s family members left the courtroom in tears after the conclusion of a court hearing that included some graphic testimony.

Lewis, Jahmeshia’s mother, expressed gratitude that the 26-year-old woman had cooperated with police.

Birdie Lewis, accompanied by community activist and private investigator Andrew Holmes, leaves a press conference outside her home on the 0 block of East 59th Street Wednesday, May 7, 2014, in Chicago. Rene Valentin-Matos, 47, was charged with the 2009 sexual assault and homicide of Lewis's 12-year-old...